If not for Fonda's scenes, this would be more like a 2 for me. A great film is there, but it's weighed down for me by attempted "comedy" that's even more annoying than it is unfunny.

Some of the comedy stuff is wrong for this film, but only the few slapstick scenes, in which there is only comedy for the sake of comedy. These scenes work fine in the Trinity films, but are pretty wrong here. But they can't destroy the film, cause several of the general ideas and the majority of the film's scenes are excellent. I would like to re-cut the film, make it about 5 min shorter, and then it would be definitely better than FAFDM.

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) – Visconti says: “A mother and her five sons live in Southern Italy, but, in order to find work, they all eventually move north to Milan. . . In Milan, the family settles in a slum. At first everyone looks for work, but no one finds it. Very quickly, the situation there deteriorates and the domestic atmosphere becomes polluted. . . Rocco is pure . . . the only one who can successfully resist this degrading environment and preserve his integrity. He is also the person who suffers the most, for he is conscious of the familial tragedy, of the irresponsibility of certain of his brothers in the face of the vicissitudes of life that are destroying them. Rocco’s drama is therefore double because, in addition to his own suffering, he takes upon himself the misery of every other member of his family. . . Discouraged because they can’t find work—disheartened is perhaps a better word—three of the brothers end up by becoming boxers. . . Confronted by the difficulties of life in the big city, the brothers fall from grace one after the other. The one who falls first, Simone, is Rocco’s favorite. In the end, this character plays a very important part in the drama. For what happens to Simone makes clear that the reasons for, or causes of, a family’s survival—or self-destruction—are not the unique location in which it finds itself, as you might expect. Basically, this family, had it remained united, in Milan or anywhere else, would have had a chance to survive intact. Staying together would have been its strategy for success, if you will. Another element apart from unemployment divides the family, however, and pits two of the brothers (the others are too young) against one another. In the same ghetto as theirs lives a call girl named Nadia. She is also poor by birth, but her job permits her to live better than those around her. Every day she lures young men into her bed, and for them she represents luxury of a kind, even mystery. Only Rocco remains insensitive in the beginning to the charms of this urban princess. But such precise delineation is unnecessary here, since all of these characters are part of the same reality. I don’t need to assign it any poetic quality, for the poetry emanates naturally from this environment—from the clash between fish out of water, as it were (Rocco and his displaced family), and the highly toxic water in which they now find themselves (the city of Milan). Still, in her mysterious way, Nadia herself is a character apart from this environment, and one who intervenes directly—almost constantly—in the tragedy, precipitating its events. This is because she falls in love with Rocco, the family’s only hope for salvation. Nadia and Rocco’s rapport, which forms gradually, is difficult to fathom. There are so many shades to their relationship that I simply could not explain them all in mere words. . . But the result of Rocco and Nadia’s liaison is obvious: it arouses the jealousy of others. And Rocco suffers as a result, because saving his family is more important to him than Nadia’s love.”

Jenkins says: Film: 3/10 and 9/10. 1080p Transfer: 9/10.

« Last Edit: March 22, 2016, 03:08:27 PM by dave jenkins »

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That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991) - To say nothing of a Brighter Summer Night. This film has two lighting schemes: High Noon and Christmas Eve. The first is frequently plausible, the second should only happen once a year, but we get it again and again. This is my complaint about most of modern Asian cinema: it all looks like TV. This production also features immaculate sets and locations and clothes that seem never to have been previously worn. It's a shame because the story--about gang violence in early 60s Taiwan--is potentially interesting, and in fact the director, Edward Yang, does a great job of juggling a legion of characters. But visually this film sucks.

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That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.

Of course, the only normal people in the movie are Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett and Sarah Paulson, who plays Blanchett's friend and former lesbian partner. All the men are creeps and weirdos and jackasses.

Okay, so I get the whole repression and societal acceptance stuff from the 1950's ... But once these women do go off together, this big road trip, and night after night they stay in one hotel or another, and they do nothing at all physically for most of the movie. Maybe occasionally put a hand on each other for a second and that's all. Then after what must be weeks of knowing each other and being pretty damn clear about their feelings, finally one night they actually start touching and Mara says, "Take me to bed." yeah, so these lezbos (one new and one old) are together all this time but never do a thing with each other for a long time. Very very believable The notion of repressing feelings and actions for societal reasons certainly is real; if they just gave each other these affectionate looks but never actually went out together, that'd be fine. But once they are taking a friggin' road trip and sleeping in the same room all the time and there's no secret about their feelings but barely even touch each other for the first 2/3 of the movie? No, there's nuthin' believable about this at all.

So, we have two actresses that I generally like very much, though this is not my favorite roles of theirs. And we have some nice color cinematography. Also some crappy production design (were department stores in the 1950's really that awfully ugly? Feels like a prison). And some awful rear-projections in the car scenes (a car on a highway would be moving at least 50 miles per hour, but the rear-projection camera is moving at maybe 5 miles per hour. Takes like 15 seconds of screen time to pass a damn tree on the highway that any car driving half of the speed limit would pass in 2 seconds. This happens a lot with rear projections in driving scenes, but this one is particularly bad. I thought we are supposed to be more sophisticated today).

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There are three types of people in the world, my friend: those who can add, and those who can't.